


Ode to Man

by Dionysisch



Series: Inevitable destruction [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Classics, Domestic Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 16:18:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1476118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dionysisch/pseuds/Dionysisch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim chuckles lightly. Gently, delighted. Childish and pleased with his own mystery, with his own vision of Sherlock that is closer to truth than anything the detective has ever experienced or acknowledged about himself.</p><p>The comfort of understanding, an exploration.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ode to Man

> _So, it seems that living souls can be subjected to one of two fates:_  
>  some are born as bees, and some are born as roses.  
>  What does the swarm of bees do, with its queen?  
>  It flies and steals a little honey from all the roses, and takes it to  
>  the hive, into its little cells. And the rose? The rose has its own  
>  honey in itself: rose honey, the most adored and precious!  
>  The sweetest, most enamoring thing is what the rose already  
>  contains within itself: it does not seek it anywhere else.  
>  But, sometimes, they sigh in solitude, the roses, those divine   
>  _beings. The roses are ignorant; they don’t understand their own  
> _ _mysteries._  
>  (Arturo’s Island, Elsa Morante)

  
The amount of time they have spent kissing is something neither Sherlock nor Jim have been troubled to quantify. Beyond one’s sense of mathematical control and the other’s odd, reluctant self-preservation, there is only a sacred exploration of what has been dragged from the virtual world to become material, real. Profane and yet the farthest from becoming ordinary or predictable. Both don’t quite grasp the mystery or fascination forcing common people to rush close for warmth and skin and contact - but oh, it does make so much more sense now. In a way, at least. In the confines of a timeless world and with Sherlock holding him tight, Jim thinks that he could bear existing - at least for a while. That it is possible not to float ten feet high up above his own hands and heart, but rather to come alive in them, because of them, because of the touch making him sigh and _die_ softly on Sherlock’s lips.

His lips are swollen, bruised, and the tickling rush of blood on the offended skin is a foreign feeling Sherlock takes moments to appreciate without letting go of Jim. Their growing confidence in the kiss is only matched by a sense of inexperience and devouring curiosity nagging at them, making their motions subsequently more and more frantic, nervous, clutching at skin, hair, biting into lips. Hissing, sighing. It’s an attack and a celebration, a moment of reconciliation and placid blue for minds at war. Adoration. They scratch and peel and kiss metaphorical wounds to get closer to bones, muscle, to whatever lies beneath their skin and makes them who they are. One and the same.

When Jim pulls away, he looks alive. Painfully young, lost. Smaller than ever, lowering himself and opening eyes wide and liquid that are set on Sherlock, don’t see anything but Sherlock, and seem to devour the sight of the detective before them with each second spent in silence. His heart is racing, his cheeks are flushed with a shade of pink he has no memory of ever witnessing on his skin. “I really am tired now,” he mumbles in explanation to Sherlock’s confused gaze, before catching one of the detective’s hands in the act of freeing him from his hold. He lets their fingers tangle. Stares at them for a second, smiles.

 

Sherlock refuses to lay beneath the sheets but does not show the slightest intention to actually get up and leave. Their configuration on the bed is absurd, but Jim does not seem to mind. He is well tucked in the white, white sheets, laying on his side with his elbow propped up to hold his head on one hand. Sherlock mirrors him above the blankets, still dressed up in his ridiculous, wrinkled shirt and suit pants. Jim has kissed a few times a point on his neck in which he can sense his pulse flutter madly, the gesture welcomed with guttural, unexpected, beautiful sounds that have made him proud and curious, all the more willing to try and receive more in response. 

 

When they let silence sit between them and they are not kissing, Jim touches his face. Sherlock does not quite understand why, but the brush of his fingertips against his sharp cheekbones is soft and terribly gentle. Something pleasing in itself but that, he observes, makes him rethink even more all the mental images associated to what Jim is. Or better, to what he should be. He touches with a delicateness verging on hesitation, maps his facial structure, follows the line of his lips with the most fascinated and absorbed gaze. It hits Sherlock in his unresolved, unaccepted vanity. The man seems to be admiring him and he lets him, flattered and proud and glad to lean in to such gentleness.

Jim touches Sherlock to remember, to map. To meet his memories and fantasies with the consistent sensorial pattern of bones and lips, of Sherlock’s breath crushing slowly against his fingertips. He touches because he needs to confirm to himself the most blatant and incredible truth. That he’s real, he’s there. Calm and relaxed and willing and beautiful. Touch, touch, touch. He remembers the atoms, the repulsion of electrons at a ridiculous distance of millimeters. Ten elevated to minus 8, and with Sherlock breathing quietly against him he wonders how much of the illusion of contact is only a curious product of electric stimulation agitating his brain. 

 

“What did you do?” Sherlock asks. Both men have relaxed in their pose, falling with their heads on the pillows and their bodies aligned parallel to each other. Sherlock has his right hand reaching for Jim’s neck, fingers tracing gently his tendons as Jim closes his eyes.

“Mh?”  
“Before building a criminal web for the sake of chasing me.”  
A grin forms on Jim’s lips but he doesn’t open his eyes. 

“How self-centered of you, Sherl,” he purrs. His voice is warm and his tongue seems to wrap around each syllable, voluntarily indulging in the last one, as if he could linger for a second more in the pleasure of owning the detective. As a sound, at least. 

“It is the truth, nonetheless.”  
“Mh. It is implied in your role that you should be chasing me.”  
“I don’t need to,” he replies. Overconfident, brazen. Terribly right. Jim lets that moment of truth sit between them in silence, does not allow Sherlock the pleasure and glory of another victory, another confirmation of Jim’s reckless, self-destructive need.

 

“So. What did you do?”

“I was in academia.”  
“Oh. Computer Science?”  
“Amongst plenty of other things that you would not expect of me, yes,” Jim lazily opens his eyes to grin at him, challenging and proud and amused. Try to decipher me, Sherlock. He knows he’s one and too many things combined in a single frame and that it is overwhelming. He knows that Sherlock ignores, ignores a lot.

What surprises him is Sherlock’s present curiosity. His brand new willingness to dig and explore and be patient. His desire to know Jim is something that Jim still finds hard to understand and process. Why now? Why would he bother at all?  
“Such as?”  
“Classics.”  
Sherlock frowns. He doesn’t know where to start. He knows Latin for the practical convenience of reading early chemistry essays, his knowledge of Greek is rudimental and related to word construction, logics. He has deliberately, constantly, always ignored the world of humanities for its introspection in a side of human nature that does not reflect the quick, detached measurements of proper sciences. He does not need to know one’s spirit or dispositions to know his heart. Striated involuntary muscle pumping blood, that is all. 

“Oh.”  
“Oh,” Jim echoes, his eyes are sparkling. Childish, amused. He knows what is running through Sherlock’s mind in that moment and it makes him chuckle softly, lift one hand to comb gently the unruly curls on his forehead. “Glad you’re surprised. Unexpected, isn’t it?”  
“Quite,” Sherlock confirms. The threat of ignorance stings and it is unnerving to be staring at the man with a new bit of information he can’t quite process yet.  
“Sherloock,” Jim murmurs in his sing-song tone, vaguely drowsy, horribly tired. But playful, always so.

“What.”

“Just ask.”  
He hates the fact that it comes so easy for Jim to decipher the quirk in his brows, his looks - he suspects that if he started being more lenient and less rigid towards the less schematic or polished sides of his mind he would understand him just as perfectly.

“Why?”  
  
“Because human thoughts and fears never truly change. At least if you want to allow yourself the naivety of believing in constants, that is,” Jim explains, and there is an almost condescending, painful realization in his gaze. As if he pities or admires Sherlock for his scientific, cold superiority or he thinks he may be entirely missing the point of existence itself - and isn’t that terrible?  
“I am not the same as a man in Greek times,” Sherlock replies. Stubborn, stubborn man.

“Would you say?”  
“Yes.”  
“Ahh. Bigger and better and ever more precise,” Jim laughs, it’s disenchanted but it does not hurt. Sherlock frowns, falls in silence.

Jim leans slightly forward, presses both hands to cup his face. Looks at him with eyes full of wonder, admiration - as if Sherlock were a thing of beauty, a work of art he had never seen before. Not so close, not so real. It makes him feel on the verge of tears for a moment.

“You truly are the most human of them all, Sherlock Holmes.” _And I love you for that_. But that Jim does not say, enchanted by Sherlock’s proud stance above the world of material and mortal, but too conscious of his danger. “Polla ta deina kouden anthropu deinoteron pelei,” he  whispers. Kisses the corner of his lips, retreats.  
“There are many wonders but none as wonderful as man?” the frown on Sherlock’s face deepens and Jim chuckles lightly. Gently, delighted. Childish and pleased with his own mystery, with his own vision of Sherlock that is closer to truth than anything the detective has ever experienced or acknowledged about himself. “Numberless wonders, terrible wonders walk the earth but none the match for man,” he corrects, with one hand to trace on the tip of his finger the line of Sherlock’s lips. Sherlock as the stereotype of an unchanged sense of human superiority and creativity. The dominator. Clever creature lifting himself above the brute and simple nature with his technology, his intellect, his rational vision. And yet human, vulnerable, mortal. Susceptible to sickness, to death, to failure and reveling in the myth of his own golden existence. Sherlock is the arrogance, the motivation, the genius. A mesmerizing combination of a post human divinity and of the most reckless, human, fallible overreacher who remains unaware of himself. Sherlock is the one to watch Jim fall asleep with that thought in his mind and a faint smile on his lips, mocking his burning curiosity by giving up to tiredness, to a genuine sense of quiet and comfort pervading him.


End file.
